T. Belman. Just as the accusation of being a racist is directed to any conduct the left doesn’t like, the charge that something is against international law is equally without meaning. The Sumpreme Court in Israel is a jealous guarder of all applicable law including international law if it applies, one can rest assured that if the Supreme Court has approved, it is not against international law.
Secondly the key clause to take note of in this article is that the Bedouin are to be “moved into a new town that will be constructed on one-tenth the area they currently inhabit”. The density of the new area is about the same as the density of Jewish inhabitants. And so it should be. The Bedouin occupay too much land for their numbers.
“If it was a Jewish community, they wouldn’t be thinking about moving around the people.”
Rights groups from in and outside Israel have slammed plans by the government to relocate more than 10,000 Beduin citizens who live on or near land in the Negev that is slated to become a phosphate mine.
The planning rights group Bimkom warned that if implemented, the plans will lead to increased home demolitions and “war” with Beduin who, it said, will refuse to move to a new town. Human Rights Watch also condemned the plans, saying they reflect discrimination toward the Beduin and are among practices that violate international treaties to which Israel is a signatory.
The plans were outlined by Yair Maayan, the head of the Authority for Development and Settlement of the Beduin of the Negev, to The Jerusalem Post and described in an article published on Wednesday.
“If it was a Jewish community, they wouldn’t be thinking about moving around the people,” said Sana Ibn Bari, a staffer at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. “A forced solution is illegal, according to international law.”
If implemented, the relocations would be one of the largest in the country’s recent history, exceeding the Gaza Strip withdrawal of 2005, when some 8,000 citizens were forced to move.
Maayan was undaunted by the criticism. He said the plan for the phosphate mine, which he termed a “strategic reserve,” was approved years ago and that it is long past the time for objections. This is despite the plan being endorsed by an interministerial committee just two weeks ago and is being vehemently opposed by Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman, who said air contamination from the facility would harm or kill people in the vicinity.
According to the government’s plan, some 8,000 Beduin in the vicinity of al-Poraa – a village near Arad that was earmarked for recognition more than a decade ago – are to be moved into a new town that will be constructed on one-tenth the area they currently inhabit. In addition, 2,000 to 3,000 Beduin will be relocated to the nearby town of Kuseifa and elsewhere, according to Maayan.
Although Maayan refrains from using the names of unrecognized villages, in practice, implementation of the plan would mean residents would be forced to leave the unrecognized Beduin community of al-Zarura to be concentrated in the new town.
Residents of the unrecognized communities of al-Azeh and Qatamat would also be impacted.
“It is necessary to move the residents to the location where the settlement will be established,” Maayan wrote in an email to The Post Wednesday. The precise location of the new town has yet to be decided. In interviews, residents said they would refuse to move, even if it was only a few kilometers. They say they are living on property that has belonged to their families since Ottoman times.
The Beduin Authority takes a different view. “Where they are living now is unrecognized. They will have to move to a place that is legal,” said spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef.
Nili Baruch, a planner at Bimkom, said: “It is regrettable that the head of the authority that is supposed to be concerned for the Beduin is giving priority to a polluting phosphate site over citizens living on their land, and is advancing their transfer.”
“The gravest aspect is that he treats them – 10,000 people – like peons who can be moved from place to place,” she added.
In Baruch’s view, Beduin from different villages will simply not agree to be concentrated together in one new place. “The policy of concentrating populations from several villages together has failed. The concentrated Beduin towns are ranked the lowest in Israel in planning terms, socially and economically. It’s an unrealistic solution.”
She predicts that since Beduin will refuse to move to the new al-Poraa, authorities will coerce them to relocate. “It’s a recipe for struggle against the Beduin, for making a war against the Beduin. It’s a recipe for home demolitions and a great deal of pressure against a population that is already vulnerable,” Baruch said.
Maayan said there is no basis for fears of a conflict with the Beduin over moving them to the new town. “We are talking about establishing four neighborhoods, each for a different family, and we are doing it in coordination with families and in agreement with them,” he said.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer at Adalah, a legal advocacy group for the Arab minority, said: “Displacement is a traumatic issue, and a state should not seek to displace its citizens under any circumstances, unless we are talking about temporary circumstances like an earthquake or something to protect the people themselves. Under these circumstances, there is no justification. This harms the right to equality, dignity and property.”
Sari Bashi, the local representative of Human Rights Watch, said the Beduin Authority’s plan “appears consistent with Israeli government practices to displace Beduin citizens and discriminate against them. The discrimination underlying those policies, as well as their effect on other rights such as education, health and the rights of the child, violate the commitments that Israel has assumed as part of its ratification of a number of human-rights treaties, including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.”
In a related development, several thousand Beduin and Arad residents on Thursday afternoon held a joint protest at the entrance to Arad, against plans for the mine. Demonstrators held up signs saying “We want to live without mines” and “We demand clean air.”
Is he kidding? Has he never heard of Gush Katif? His historical revisionism exposes his antisemitism. Antisemites must go. They must leave Israel. However.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“Eminent Domain” is used by every court in every civilised country I know of. These damed nomad Arabs expect the State of Israel to cater to their prehistoric way of life, as if they were a newly discovered Amazonian tribe. And they’ve increased, due to polygamy, from under 10,000 in 1951 to over 420,000 by last count, and are taking over large parts of the country, especially in Negev and Galil.
If this is in violation of international law then the U.S. Supreme Court must also be subject to prosecution under international law. Good luck with that.
And Europe and many other places as well.
“Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (Singapore), compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda) resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia), or expropriation (France, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Denmark, Sweden) is the power of a state, provincial, or national government to take private property for public use. However, this power can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized by the legislature to exercise the functions of public character.[1]
The property may be taken either for government use or by third parties through legislative delegation of the taking power, when those parties are authorized to use it for public or civic uses or, in some cases, for economic development. The most common uses of property taken by eminent domain are for roads and government buildings and other facilities, public utilities. Some jurisdictions require that the taker make an offer to purchase the subject property, before resorting to the use of eminent domain.
However, once the property is taken and the judgment is final, the condemnor owns it in fee simple, and may put it to uses other than those specified in the eminent domain action.
Takings may be of the subject property in its entirety (total take) or in part (part take), either quantitatively or qualitatively (either partially in fee simple or, commonly, an easement, or any other interest less than the full fee simple title).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
As usual, Israel is being unfairly singled out for condemnation.
They have an unmitigated chutzpah, and are aided by enemies of the Jewish People who are shamefully Jews themselves. They put their “rights” which are illegal and self taken, over those of the whole country. They use 10 times s much land for their stinking goats, than a Jew is allowed. and they are illegal, and unrecognised buildings. being there from Ottoman times means nothing historically it is a few minutes. They are the Bedouin, nomad goat or sheep herders who were seasonal movers, and were caught in the area when Israel declared a State. That’s all. They were NOT settled there since Ottoman times. They were NOT settled at all, lived in tents, and moved around. Only living in ramshackle dwellings from comparatively recently, when their nomad life became hemmed in a bit.
nd the cursed Jews, the ENEMY WITHIN, are encouraging them to cause trouble……what’s new…?